All of reconstellate's Comments + Replies

This whole post you keep referencing "the Hegelian dialectic" as some sort of thing central to the Village, without ever stating what you think it is; could you elaborate?

I'm not an expert in this area by any means but I do not have the impression that the Village has even a plurality of Hegelians, let alone being centered around them, and the way you talk about the Hegelian dialectic does not seem to be remotely the same usage that you see with actual Hegelians. Honestly I expect actual Hegelians to be rather less upset about the River's differences from them, because, to my understanding, Hegel's whole thing is he believes in a sort of teleology of history that guarantees the victory of human freedom?

2TAG
I noticed the same thing -- even Scott Alexander dropped a reference to it without explaining it. Anyway, here what I came up with:- https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/s/lVNnjhTurI (That's me done for another two days)
1Philip Bellew
People will pick traits they want, and I doubt any specific thing other than "doesn't have disorders" would be universal. While I have reservations about the tech, leaving it in the hands of individuals seems massively preferable to government regulations on reproduction details. Especially if what you can control gets more precise. Even the worst individual eugenics fantasy has nothing on govt deciding that all children share particular traits and lack others. It's also not clear to me where the difference between choosing offspring vs choosing a partner for offspring ever becomes something law should enforce...or even can, while allowing editing against disorders.
[anonymous]3310

important context is that this is a reference to a meme currently going around on tiktok.

Reading this makes me angry because of the things he so confidently gets wrong (always fun to have a dude clearly describe a phenomenon he is clearly experiencing as “mostly female”).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't QC an actual math prodigy, like was specifically well known for his mathematical ability? I would venture to say it's non-obvious that he is the one experiencing a phenomenon attributed to people bad at math.

8Elizabeth
The phenomenon extends beyond math Additionally, prodigies are amongst the most likely people to experience this, because they spend so much of their early life being the best in the room. Math grad students aren't comparing themselves to the 8 billion people who are worse than them at math, they're comparing themselves to each other, field leaders, and dead people who accomplished more at a given age. 
2Mart_Korz
I read as "he makes a claim about a thought pattern he considers mostly female", not as "he himself is described by the pattern" (QC does demonstrate high epistemic confidence in that post). Thus, I don't think that Elizabeth would disagree with you.
5interstice
I think she meant he was looking for epistemic authority figures to defer to more broadly, even if it wasn't because he thought they were better at math than him.

Speaking as someone who's been on hormones for 4 years and considered myself trans for 5, this is probably the majority of detransitions (insofar as they can be considered "de"). Many of my friends have detransitioned without any regret for taking hormones (or continued hormones but decided to socially detransition, etc), and they usually remain fairly integrated with trans friends, having enough trans experience to "get it" and be an honorary trans no matter what. Like OP said, cultural integration is pretty sufficient to remain in trans communities even ... (read more)

This is a very good post and nearly all the replies here are illustrating the exact issue that Bob has, which is an inability to engage in the dialectic between these two perspectives without indignation as a defense against guilt.

Most people, including myself, are more Bob than Alice, but I've had a much easier time integrating my inner Alice and engaging with Alices I meet because I rarely, if ever, feel guilt about anything. Strong guilt increases the anticipated costs of positive self-change, and makes people strengthen defense mechanisms that boil dow... (read more)

6Said Achmiz
It seems like you see only two possibilities: either (a) agreeing with Alice, or (b) secretly agreeing with Alice and feeling guilty about it. Do you not see any possibility of disagreeing with Alice? Thinking that she’s just wrong? Do you see no possibility of someone thinking that the change in question is actually negative, not positive? Sincerely believing that one doesn’t owe anyone anything (or, at least, that one doesn’t owe the sorts of things that the Alices of the world claim that we owe), without guilt?

Thanks for the review! I remember your last post.

I'm definitely a Camp 2 person, though I have several Camp 1 beliefs. Consciousness pretty obviously has to be physical, and it seems likely that it's evolved. I'm in a perpetual state of aporia trying to reconcile this with Camp 2 intuitions. Treating my own directly-apprehensible experience as fictional worldbuilding seems nonsensical, as any outside evidence is going to be running through that experience, and without a root of trust in my own experiences there's no way out of Cartesian doubt.

Probably rele... (read more)

5Rafael Harth
I wouldn't call those Camp #1 beliefs. It's true that virtually all of Camp #1 would agree with this, but plenty of Camp #2 does as well. Like, you can accept physicalism and be Camp #2, deny physicalism and be Camp #2, or accept physicalism and be Camp #1 -- those are basically the three options, and you seem to be in the first group. Especially based on your second-last paragraph, I think it's quite clear that you conceptually separate consciousness from the processes that exhibit it. I don't think you'll ever find a home with Camp #1 explanations. I briefly mentioned in the post that the way Dennett frames the issue is a bit disingenuous since the Cartesian Theater has a bunch of associations that Camp #2 people don't have to hold. Being a physicalist and Camp #2 of course leaves you with not having any satisfying answer for how consciousness works. That's just the state of things. The synesthesia thing is super interesting. I'd love to know how strong the correlation is between having this condition, even if mild, and being Camp #2.